The present invention relates to a football boot and more particularly a football boot having projections on the outside of the upper portion thereof, for enhancing frictional contact with a ball to be controlled with the boot.
The expression football boot is used in this specification to denote any sports boot or shoe for playing games involving moving a ball of any type and shape by means of the foot, even if the foot is not always the main agent throughout the game for moving the ball, thus including for example American Football. The term boot is used to cover the modern kind of football footwear which often shows a trend towards a lighter boot construction by approaching the lower format of a shoe, rather than the higher build of a conventional design of boot.
There are already a number of football boots which have friction-enhancing projections on the outside of the upper portion thereof, in order thereby to improve contact with the ball and to enable the football player to impart considerable effects to the ball and thereby for example to strike the ball in a curve. Such boot designs include arranging for conical or hemispherical projections comprising for example rubber to project through holes in the upper portion of the boot (see for example German Utility Model No 18 37 884), providing a coating of plastic material or rubber with knobs on the outside of the upper portion of the boot, or impregnating or causing pitting or pocking in the outside surface of the upper portion of the boot (see German Utility Model No 69 18 326), or arranging special sheets of rubber on the boot upper (see for example German laid-open application DOS No 26 52 055). If such designs have been put to practical use, they have only achieved partial success. For example, under wet conditions, when good contact with the ball is most required, rubber knobs become substantially useless, while pocking or roughening up the surface of the leather loses its effectiveness after just a short period of time, due to mud and dirt inevitably accumulating in the recesses formed by the pocking or roughening, thus resulting in the outside surface of the boot upper becoming smooth.